Are the people in your life building you up, or are they tearing you down?
I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately when I think about the people I’ve allowed into my life over the years.
Do they want you to succeed? Do they celebrate when something good happens to you? Can they tell you when you’re wrong without making you feel small? Will they be there during your darkest hours, just as you’ve been there for theirs?
And maybe one of the simplest questions is this:
How do you feel after spending time with them?
Do you leave feeling supported, loved, and happy that you spent time together?
Or do you leave feeling exhausted, anxious, frustrated, or drained?
I’ve experienced both.
I’ve also learned that letting go of unhealthy friendships can be one of the hardest parts of choosing what’s best for yourself.
Over the years, my circle has gotten smaller. I’ve had friendships end mutually, friendships that slowly faded away, and friendships where I finally had to say, I can’t do this anymore.
Letting those people go was hard. Really hard.
But it also taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about friendship:
Quality matters more than quantity.
Why We Hold On
Looking back, I’ve had friendships I probably should have walked away from years before I actually did.
I’m guilty of staying too long.
Sometimes it was because we’d been friends for years. When someone has been part of your life for a decade or longer, walking away isn’t as simple as deleting their number.
There’s history there.
There are good memories mixed in with the bad ones. There are mutual friends. Sometimes there are entire families you’ve grown to love. Walking away from one person can feel like you’re walking away from an entire part of your life.
Other times, I stayed because I genuinely cared about the person.
I gave people the benefit of the doubt. I gave second chances. Sometimes third and fourth chances.
I’d see someone’s good side and convince myself that maybe things would be different this time. Someone would apologize. Things would improve for a while. I’d see the person I originally became friends with again.
And I’d stay.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with giving someone another chance. People screw up. I screw up too.
I’m far from perfect.
I’ve made mistakes in friendships. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said. I’ve handled situations poorly. The difference I’ve learned to look for isn’t whether someone makes mistakes. Every single one of us does.
It’s what happens afterward.
Can we admit when we screwed up? Can we apologize? Can we learn from it? Can we try not to repeat the same behavior?
Or does the same cycle continue over and over again?
Eventually, giving someone the benefit of the doubt can turn into constantly making excuses for behavior that’s hurting you.
I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.
Being the Sober One in the Room
There was a period of my life when I spent a lot of time with a group of people whose social lives revolved heavily around alcohol.
Some of these people meant a lot to me. Some still do.
I’m not telling this story because I think drinking automatically makes someone a bad person. It doesn’t. And I’m not interested in putting individual people on blast or sharing stories that aren’t mine to make public.
But I can tell you what the experience was like for me.
I was the sober one.
Drinking wasn’t an occasional part of the night with this group. Sometimes it felt like drinking was the night.
And when you’re the sober person surrounded by people who are heavily intoxicated, you see a lot.
I saw people become happy, angry, emotional, affectionate, reckless, and sometimes completely different from the people I knew when they were sober.
I saw arguments.
I saw tears.
I saw people say and do things they probably wouldn’t have done otherwise.
And because I was the sober one, I often became the person caught in the middle.
People trusted me, which at first I appreciated. I wanted to be a good friend. If somebody was hurting, I wanted them to know they could talk to me.
But eventually, I became the middleman.
One person would tell me what someone else had done. Someone else would unload about another relationship. I’d hear secrets I never wanted to know and find myself carrying information I couldn’t repeat.
At some point, I realized something:
I was carrying things that weren’t mine to carry.
Their problems were becoming my problems.
Their arguments were affecting my mood.
Their drama was following me home.
I’d spend time with people I considered friends and leave mentally exhausted.
And this didn’t happen once.
It went on for years.
There were also circumstances involving people I had been close to that eventually became far more serious than drunken arguments or friendship drama. I found myself pulled into situations I never imagined being part of, including one involving law enforcement.
Those details aren’t mine to make public, and they aren’t necessary to make my point.
What matters is what I eventually realized:
I didn’t have to keep participating in all of it.
When Enough Became Enough.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment when I stood up, announced that I was finished, and walked away from everyone.
Different friendships had different breaking points.
But collectively, I was exhausted.
I wasn’t happy anymore.
For years, I’d wanted to create distance, but something always kept me there. Loyalty. History. Other people I cared about. Hope that things would change. Fear of losing an entire group rather than just one friendship.
Eventually, none of those reasons outweighed what staying was doing to me.
I started looking at the direction I wanted my own life to go and realized I didn’t want to keep going down that road.
Eventually, I’d had enough.
I was done.
I stopped showing up.
I walked away.
I let them go.
Was I angry?
Absolutely.
Was I sad?
One hundred percent.
And at first, it was lonely.
I think that’s another reason we sometimes hold onto friendships we know aren’t good for us. Walking away doesn’t immediately replace those people with better ones. Sometimes it simply leaves an empty space where those friendships used to be.
That empty space can be uncomfortable. It can even make you question whether walking away was the right decision.
But I’ve learned that you don’t have to immediately fill it.
Sometimes you need to let that space stay empty for a while. Give yourself time to clear your head, figure out what you actually want from the people in your life, and become more intentional about who you allow into your circle next.
Looking back, there are also boundaries I should have established much sooner.
That’s something I own.
I thought being a good friend meant always being there. I thought loyalty meant sticking around through almost anything.
I’ve learned that supporting someone and sacrificing your own well-being for them are two very different things.
You can love somebody and establish a boundary.
You can care about somebody and decide you can’t participate in their lifestyle.
You can forgive somebody and still decide they shouldn’t have the same access to your life anymore.
And sometimes you can genuinely wish someone the best from a distance.
Letting someone go doesn’t require hating them.
It Wasn’t Just About Alcohol
Heavy drinking was part of one chapter of my life, but the larger lesson goes far beyond alcohol.
At different points in my life, I’ve experienced friendships involving jealousy, manipulation, constant negativity, judgment, unhealthy dependency, dishonesty, and perpetual victimhood.
I’ve had people who seemed supportive until something good happened for me.
I’ve experienced criticism that wasn’t intended to help me improve but instead left me questioning myself.
I’ve dealt with people who could explain why everything was always somebody else’s fault but struggled to acknowledge their own role in anything.
And I’ve encountered people who apologized and seemed to change, only for the same patterns to eventually appear again.
These days, I pay much more attention to patterns.
A friend having a terrible week doesn’t make them toxic.
Someone struggling with addiction isn’t automatically a bad person.
A friend disagreeing with you isn’t tearing you down.
And someone calling you out when you’re genuinely wrong might actually be one of the better friends you have.
I don’t want friends who agree with everything I say.
If I’m being an asshole, tell me I’m being an asshole.
That’s friendship too.
What matters is the pattern.
Does this person take responsibility for their actions?
Do they respect your boundaries?
Do they genuinely want good things for you?
Can they celebrate your success without turning it into a competition?
When they criticize you, are they trying to help you grow or make you feel smaller?
Is the friendship reciprocal, or are you constantly giving while they constantly take?
And again:
How do you feel when you’re around them?
One bad day doesn’t define someone.
But if being around someone consistently leaves you anxious, drained, insecure, or responsible for fixing their life, it’s worth asking yourself why you’re continuing to participate in that relationship.
You Don’t Need a Catastrophe to Leave
This is something I wish I’d understood much earlier.
You don’t need some massive betrayal before you’re allowed to reconsider a friendship.
You don’t have to wait until somebody does something unforgivable.
Sometimes there isn’t one huge event.
Sometimes it’s a hundred little things.
A hundred times going home exhausted.
A hundred times ignoring your own boundaries.
A hundred times accepting an apology without seeing a change.
A hundred times thinking, Maybe it’ll be different next time.
Until eventually you realize:
I don’t want to do this anymore.
And that’s enough to start asking some difficult questions.
I’m also not telling anyone to immediately cut off every friend who annoys them.
Relationships are complicated.
People go through hard times. Good friends sometimes need us to carry a little more of the weight for a while, just as we’ll eventually need them to do for us.
But there’s a difference between helping someone carry something and allowing them to hand you their baggage indefinitely.
That’s a boundary I understand much better today.
Let Them Go
Part of disconnecting to reconnecting isn’t just putting down our phones or stepping away from social media.
Sometimes we need to disconnect from relationships that no longer belong in our lives.
And that’s difficult.
You might lose other friends in the process.
You might spend some time alone.
You might wonder whether you made the right decision.
But I’ve learned that if you continue focusing on the bad that’s over there, you might miss the good that’s out there.
Sometimes you need to create space.
These days, I’m much more selective about who I allow into my circle.
That doesn’t mean I expect perfection.
My friends aren’t perfect.
I’m sure as hell not perfect.
But I want people around me whom I can support and who support me in return. I want people who want to see me succeed. I want people I can laugh with, talk with, disagree with, and still know at the end of the day that we care about one another.
And after going through the friendships I did, I’ve realized something else.
I have that now.
I Found My People
Recently, I went to a birthday party with my current group of friends.
It wasn’t some extraordinary night.
And maybe that’s exactly why it meant so much to me.
We played games. We laughed. We shared stories. We talked about movies and TV shows. Everyone was sober, and nobody needed alcohol for us to have a good time.
There was no chaos.
Nobody needed rescuing.
Nobody got angry because they lost a game.
Nobody’s problems became everybody else’s problems.
We just had a really great night together.
I came away from it thinking about how grateful I am for these people.
They’re supportive.
They’re kind.
They’re loving.
We support each other’s goals. We celebrate each other’s wins. We can simply spend time together and enjoy being around one another.
Are these friendships perfect?
Of course not.
Nothing involving human beings ever is.
But they’re pretty damn amazing.
And I love these people dearly.
Looking back now, I realize that going through unhealthy friendships taught me what I wanted from healthy ones.
I had to experience the bad before I fully understood the good.
I had to learn what kinds of people I didn’t want in my life before I understood the kinds of people I did.
And ultimately, I had to let some people go before I found my people.
So if there’s someone in your life you’ve been holding onto even though the friendship consistently leaves you feeling worse, maybe it’s worth asking yourself why.
Maybe a boundary needs to be established.
Maybe an honest conversation needs to happen.
Maybe the friendship can change.
Or maybe you’ve already known the answer for a long time and have just been afraid to say it.
Sometimes letting go isn’t about anger.
It isn’t about revenge.
And it doesn’t mean the friendship never mattered.
Sometimes letting go simply means accepting that someone was part of one chapter of your life but doesn’t belong in the next one.
You can appreciate what they taught you.
You can remember the good times.
You can wish them well.
And then you can let them go.
Because sometimes what you’re letting go of isn’t nearly as important as what you’re finally making room for.
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Disconnect to Reconnect is about spending less time online and more time enjoying life beyond the screen. While comments are disabled, I encourage you to take what resonates with you, step away from your device, and reconnect with what matters most.